


Flower of This Purple Dye, Hit With Goose's Archery

by WretchedArtifact



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Marvel Cinematic Universe Fusion, Cats, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Soulmates Chosen By Goose the Angry Flerken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-03 21:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20460086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WretchedArtifact/pseuds/WretchedArtifact
Summary: When Yuri finds an orange tabby cat roaming the halls of the rink in Sochi, he inadvertently finds himself an accomplice to her grand mission of love.





	Flower of This Purple Dye, Hit With Goose's Archery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scytale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scytale/gifts).

> Written for the "Writing Rainbow: Purple" fic exchange! Apologies to both Cupid and Shakespeare for the title.

There was a cat inside the Iceberg Skating Palace in Sochi.

Yuri Plisetsky had seen her several times over the last few days: an orange tabby cat, just wandering around the backstage area while the skaters and their teams were getting ready. She darted away whenever Yuri tried to come close, and every time he tried to point her out to someone else, she’d slip out of sight and leave him looking like an idiot. The only other person who actually saw her was Victor, who happened to be looking in the right direction when the cat darted quickly across the hall in front of them. “Huh,” Victor said. “That’s strange.”

Yuri ran down the hall after her, but she had already turned down an adjacent hallway and vanished. “I keep seeing her running around back here,” Yuri said. “I don’t know why no one’s caught her and put her outside.”

“Maybe she belongs to someone?”

Yuri rolled his eyes. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. Yuri _wished_ he could bring his cat with him to competitions. Leaving Potya behind at home was always the worst part of traveling.

He forgot about the cat temporarily when it came time for him to compete, but when the Junior Grand Prix Final events were over and Yuri was wearing his gold medal proudly around his neck, he decided to keep an eye out for the cat and try to catch her, if he could. She was probably a stray, and who knew if she had any food or water in the arena? He prowled around backstage looking for her until the Men’s free skate started, and then he gave up and went up to the stands to watch the skaters perform.

Next year Yuri would be competing against all the senior skaters for the first time, so he watched them all and criticized them in his head. Cao Bin—an okay skater, but he was 28 and would probably retire at the end of the season. Michele Crispino—bleh, boring. JJ Leroy—the most annoying person in the entire universe, but he had three quads, which was dangerous.

Then Yuuri Katsuki—_yikes._ His jumps were a mess, even though his step sequence was probably the best one Yuri had seen all weekend. Yuuri hadn’t skated that badly in the short program, so maybe the pressure had gotten to him. Yuri had always kept an eye on this other Yuuri since they shared the same name, and he found himself even more curious about him after that shaky performance. What was Yuuri like as a person?

Yuri felt something brush against his ankle. He looked down and saw an unexpected sight: the orange tabby cat, rubbing her face against his leg like they were the best of friends. “Whoa,” Yuri said. “How the hell did you get up here into the stands?” He reached down and held his hand out, and the cat butted her head against his knuckles. Yuri reached down and picked her up. She didn’t struggle, surprisingly, but settled down in Yuri’s lap and continued nuzzling Yuri’s hand. “Oh, maybe you do belong to somebody,” Yuri said, as he realized she was wearing a thin collar. The little tag dangling from it said _GOOSE_.

“What the fuck are you doing in an ice rink?” Yuri asked Goose, keeping his tone nice so she wouldn’t be scared. She didn’t answer, of course, but now that she was closer to Yuri he could hear her faintly purring. Goose was a surprisingly heavy cat, and she didn’t seem to be starving or anything, so Yuri didn’t immediately get up to take her outside. He kept petting her as he watched Chris Giacometti skate—ugh, _gross_—and then Victor. Victor was the person Yuri really had to worry about next season. He had every quad but the Axel and his programs always scored high for their artistry, even though Yuri thought his free skate this year was kind of boring.

When it was all over, Victor won gold, of course. Goose closed her eyes and slept in Yuri’s lap all through the medal ceremony, seemingly undisturbed by the audience’s roars of applause. When the ceremony finished and the lights came up, Yuri decided to take a few pictures of Goose for his Instagram before he went to take her outside.

But after sleeping through thousands of people cheering and clapping, it was the sound of the shutter-click on Yuri’s camera app that made Goose open her eyes. She looked up at him, blinked slowly, and then vaulted off his lap.

“Hey!” Yuri exclaimed. She ran for the staircase leading down and he ran after her, cursing himself for not taking her outside earlier while he had the chance. She leapt nimbly down the stairs and then stopped at the bottom, looking up at him, and for a few seconds he thought maybe she was going to let him catch up after all. But when he was a few steps away she started running again, and he chased her out into the hall, almost bumping into some rink workers.

“What was _that?__”_ one of the workers exclaimed. “A cat? You can’t have cats in here!”

“She’s not _mine_,” Yuri said, shouldering past him and running after Goose’s flicking orange tail.

She led him on a wild chase through the maze of halls backstage, until with a start he saw someone he recognized: Yuuri Katsuki, wearing his dark Team Japan jacket, walking down the hall. His shoulders were slumped, and he pushed open the door to a bathroom and disappeared inside. Goose, right on his heels, veered sideways and followed him in.

God, this fucking cat was _weird_. Yuri jogged down the hall and went into the bathroom, too. He found Yuuri standing stock-still in the middle of the room with a bewildered look on his face as Goose wove in between his legs, rubbing her face against his shins. “Quick, grab her!” Yuri yelled.

Yuuri hurriedly leaned down and swept Goose up off the floor. He gathered her against his chest, and she didn’t fight him, rubbing her head against the front of his jacket. “Um, is this...yours?” Yuuri asked.

“No,” Yuri said. “She’s been running around backstage all day. I’m trying to catch her and take her outside.”

“Oh,” Yuuri said. “Okay. Well...here you go.”

He started to hold his arms out so Yuri could take her, but Goose looked at Yuri and made a brief, quick hissing sound. “Whoa, what the fuck?” Yuri said to her. “You liked me fine before.”

She resumed rubbing her head against the front of Yuuri’s jacket. Yuri felt genuinely snubbed. “Asshole,” he said.

“Uh—” Yuuri said.

“Not you, the cat,” Yuri said. “Well, maybe you, I don’t know you. What the fuck happened to you out there, anyway? You’re a better jumper than that.”

Yuuri looked taken aback at the change in subject, and Yuri could swear Goose knew he was being rude, because she made that quick hissing sound at him again. “I mean,” Yuri said, begrudgingly making his voice politer, “you did fine in your short program, so why was today so different?”

Goose butted her head right underneath Yuuri’s chin, and Yuuri lifted his other hand almost automatically to pet her. “I got some sad news from my family the other day,” he said. “I tried to put it out of my mind so I could focus on my program, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It really messed with my concentration.”

“Oh.” Yuri wanted to ask what the sad news was, but he knew that was rude, and he had the weirdest feeling that Goose would know it was rude, too. He’d heard people say that animals could sense emotions, but he always thought it was stuff like sadness and anger, not rudeness. “That sucks. At least your step sequence was good, though.”

“Was it?” Yuuri asked. “It’s all a blur, I couldn’t tell.”

“It was better than fuckin’ JJ’s, that’s for sure,” Yuri said. “If you started jumping better, I bet you could knock that asshole off the podium at Worlds.”

Goose started to purr in Yuuri’s arms. Apparently she didn’t care if Yuri was rude about other people. “That’s if my skating federation doesn’t sideline me after tonight,” Yuuri said.

“Who else would they send?” Yuri asked. “Everyone else in Japan sucks. No offense.”

Yuuri actually smiled a little at that, but before he could answer, the door to the bathroom opened and two rink workers came inside. They headed on autopilot for the urinals, but it was hard not to notice Yuuri standing there in the middle of the room with a cat in his arms. “How did you get _that_ inside the rink?” one of the workers asked, frowning.

“We just found her running around back here,” Yuri said. “We were going to take her outside, right?” He looked at Yuuri.

“Right,” Yuuri said.

The two workers looked suspicious, but they didn’t say anything else as Yuri went over and opened the door. He and Yuuri ducked out quickly. The adjoining hall was more busy than it had been before, now that the medal ceremony was over. “That way,” Yuri said, pointing in the direction of the exit.

But they only made it halfway there before Yuuri suddenly stopped in his tracks. “What?” Yuri said.

“Um, maybe we should—” Yuuri said, his voice suddenly faint.

Yuri didn’t know what was wrong with him, until he heard a familiar voice suddenly call out _“Yuri!”_ Down the hall, Victor melted out of the crowd of people and headed their way. Yuri could see the ribbon of his gold medal around his neck, but he’d put on his jacket and zipped it up so it wasn’t visible. Yuuri, for some reason, looked almost ill as Victor approached them, and he hugged Goose a little tighter to his chest. “Oh, you caught her!” Victor said, smiling. He held his hand out to Goose, and she sniffed his fingers for a second before allowing him to pet her.

“Is she—is she yours?” Yuuri asked.

“Oh, no,” Victor said. “But Yuri and I saw her roaming the halls earlier. She’s so cute!”

Yuri and Yuuri had been conspicuous enough just carrying a cat around, but now that they were stopped in the middle of a hallway with the newly crowned gold medalist cooing over her, everyone nearby was slowing down to stare. One of the rink workers they’d seen in the bathroom passed by, and he looked exasperated when he saw the cat in Yuuri’s arms. “You’re _still_—”

“She’s darling, isn’t she?” Victor said cheerfully. He was being subtle about it, but Yuri knew he was basically daring the rink worker to keep complaining. Victor wasn’t above using his gold-medal status to get his own way.

“Oh," the worker said, faltering. "Y-yes. But...we don’t allow animals in the rink. They said they were going to take her outside.”

“Yes, of course,” Victor said, but he just kept petting Goose, who had started to purr again. For a second Yuri could see the worker mentally vacillating between breaking the rules or making Victor Nikiforov unhappy, and wasn’t surprised at all when the man finally just turned and walked away. The fact that Victor could get away with rule-breaking would be annoying if it weren’t benefiting Yuri.

“We probably should take her outside, though,” Yuuri said. His voice still sounded kind of strained. “Someone back here might be allergic to cats.”

“Oh, that’s a good point,” Victor said. “There’s a back exit over that way, away from the crowds. Here, I’ll show you!”

He put his hand on Yuuri’s shoulder, and for a second Yuuri looked so startled that Yuri thought he might drop the cat. But Victor smiled at Yuuri—a different smile than the one he gave the worker, a realer one—and Yuuri hugged Goose tighter and said, “Okay, lead the way.”

Neither of them looked at Yuri, which was pretty fucking annoying since _he _was the one who caught the cat in the first place. He followed after them as they went down a side hall and out a door onto what looked like a loading dock. Victor was right, though, that the crowd wasn’t in this area. “Here, let’s sit down,” Victor said. “I want to see if she’ll let me hold her.”

They sat down on the lip of the loading dock, and Victor moved in very close to Yuuri and tilted out his arms. Yuri hoped that Goose would hiss at him, too, but she didn’t. She very docilely allowed Yuuri to hand her over to Victor, who immediately went into a disgusting babble of baby talk in Russian as he nuzzled her head. A little smile appeared on Yuuri’s face as he watched Victor coo over her, and his shoulders, which had tensed when Victor leaned in close, started to relax. “You wouldn’t be smiling if you knew the sickening shit he’s saying right now,” Yuri said.

“I understand some of it,” Yuuri said. “I took a few classes in Russian in college.”

Victor looked over at Yuuri with surprise. “Really?”

“Why?” Yuri said, wrinkling his nose.

“I needed a foreign language, and it seemed like an interesting choice,” Yuuri said. “So many of the best dancers and skaters have been Russian.”

“_Are_ Russian,” Yuri said, in case Yuuri had forgotten that Yuri was currently a season away from annihilating him in competitions.

Victor settled Goose into his lap, and she curled up there the same way she had in the stands with Yuri. Yuri was surprised that she was tolerating so much attention—Potya would’ve clawed his face off after this much petting and fawning. “That must’ve been difficult,” Victor said to Yuuri. “Taking classes at the same time you were training.”

“Oh, it’s—it’s not that bad,” Yuuri said, sounding a little self-conscious. “My degree’s in Dance, so a lot of it’s just like additional training.”

“Dance?” Victor asked, and he sounded genuinely impressed. “Wow, that’s amazing! My old choreographer Lilia would love you, she says all skaters should have a strong foundation in dance before they ever set foot on the ice. Do you do ballet?”

“Oh, yes,” Yuuri said. “My ballet instructor was actually the one who got me to try skating in the first place.”

Yuri was getting bored with this line of conversation, but Victor seemed excited by it. “Oh, you must be so good!” he said to Yuuri. “I want to see you do something! It doesn’t have to be ballet. What are some other dances you know?”

“Oh,” Yuuri said, his face going a little red. “Well...”

“You can’t just _order _people to dance for you,” Yuri said exasperatedly.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Victor said. “I just meant—here, I’ll do it with you. You can teach me something, and I’ll be your student!”

He lifted Goose up off his lap and, without warning, deposited her straight into Yuri’s arms. “What the _fuck_—” Yuri started to say, then cut himself off before he could say something truly rude. He waited to see if Goose would hiss at him again, but she seemed to have forgiven him for whatever he’d done before, because she just settled down in his lap again without any fuss.

Victor helped Yuuri to his feet and led him out to the middle of the loading dock, a wide concrete stage. “Um,” Yuuri said. “Before I left, I was working on the pasodoble. Have you ever done that before?”

“That’s the one with the bull and the matador, right?” Victor asked. He held his hands up next to his head, fingers curved like horns. “I’ve seen people do it, and I tried it once. My dance partner said I was very bad.”

“I doubt you’re very bad at anything,” Yuuri said.

Victor’s eyes widened, and then, incredibly, he _blushed_. “Well,” he said. “We’ll see what your opinion is after we try it together. I’ll follow your lead?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake, they were starting to _flirt_ with each other. Yuri felt his stomach turn and his gorge rise. “Look, you’re cute,” he said to Goose, “but I am seriously going to puke if I have to listen to those two idiots sweet-talk each other. I’m going inside.”

He lifted Goose off his lap and set her down on the ground below the loading dock. For a second, the orange tabby looked up at him, and then she turned and started sauntering away toward the hedge lining the driveway.

“Okay, I’ll count it off,” Yuuri said behind him, and Yuri heard him start to tap a rhythm with his foot. “One, two—”

Yuri got up and headed for the door leading back to the rink. He heard the sharp sound of steps, and then Victor’s laugh. “That’s okay,” Yuuri said. “Again. One, two—”

Then Yuri heard a wild rustling sound, and he looked back at the hedge that Goose had been heading toward. And for a second there seemed to be something wrong with his eyes, because the orange tabby was crouched in front of it, and some strange, wiggling _things_ seemed to be coming out of her mouth, digging into the foliage, prying and puncturing the tight-packed leaves.

But—no. Yuri blinked, and just like that, there was no sign of the weird...tendrils, or whatever he thought he saw. There was just the cat and the hedge, which had a gap in the leaves at the bottom. That gap had already been there before.

Right?

The orange tabby ducked through the gap and vanished, and Yuri uneasily opened the door and ducked back into the rink. Yuuri’s counting and Victor’s laughter floated through the air behind him.


End file.
